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Booze
Rosé-loving David Katz has designated muggy-ass August as "Rosé Month" at Mémé (2201 Spruce St.) — that means he's offering four Rosés by the glass for just five bucks a pop through the 31st. He's starting with two pure-blooded wines for all the purists — a 100 percent Barbera from Piedmont and a 100 percent Sangiovese from Tuscany — and he's rounding out the foursome with offerings from Spain and France. Katz adds that the $5 glasses will be available at both Thursday fried chicken lunch and Sunday brunch in addition to dinner.
Photo: Drew Lazor
Much as we like the whiskey at Village Whiskey (118 S. 20th St.), a nip of the brown can’t compete with a burger’s true beverage BFF: milkshakes! Taking a page from the carhops and soda fountains of yore (and maybe Tommy Up?), Jose Garces' swanky saloon is now serving shakes with their estimable burgers. The Garces camp has created three signature shakes — the Irish Car Bomb, Negra Modelo, Bailey's- and Jameson-infused devil’s food cake blended with vanilla and chocolate ice creams; Strawberry-Rum, with strawberries thrice (fresh, sauce, ice cream) and a slug of Gosling’s; and S’mores, a mix of toasted marshmallow ice cream and chocolate sauce garnished with graham cracker and a housemade marshmallow. There’s also plain chocolate and vanilla, for purists, and alcohol-free versions, for teetotalers and tots. Shakes are $6 to $9, served all day.
Art in the Age, which came out with ROOT in 2009 and the autumnally quirky SNAP around this time last year, dropped mention of its newest product today — RHUBY, a rhubarb-based spirit inspired by a tisane (an herbal infusion, basically a tea) made by John Bartram. Complementing the rhubarb base are vegetal elements like beets, carrots and lemons in addition to herbs/spices like coriander, cardamom, vanilla, pink peppercorns and pettigrain (bitter orange) oil. We hear it'll arrive on Philly state store shelves in the first week of August. Here's a video breaking down more on the spirit.
Photo: Art in the Age on Facebook
Chip Roman's Mica (8609 Germantown Ave.), which opened as a BYO in March and earned a solid nod from our Adam Erace along the way, has finally secured its liquor license. They're doing beer and cocktails, but wine's the real sell up in Chestnut Hill — bottle prices on the internationally inflected list range between $32 and $110, but most hover in the modest $40ish range; glasses go from $8 to $12. If you still want to tote along your own, note that Mica's running a $25 corkage fee.
Photo: Neal Santos
Come thru Johnny Brenda's (1201 N. Frankford Ave.) tomorrow, July 16, from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. to partake in their annual Saison Brunch, where a whole buncha summer-friendly saison and farmhouse-style ales get the tap treatment to accompany JB's regular brunch menu, plus a selection of Jacques Pepin-esque French country fare. (Ooh and a French pop soundtrack too.) Chef/owner Paul Kimport will be doing an herby chicken liver mousse, country pate, pate en croute, Lyonnaise salad, quiche with gruyere/ham/favas and a Birchrun Hills Fat Cat cheese plate with fig jam, plus sour cherry clafloutis and apricot tarte tatin for sweets lovers. Check out what they'll definitely putting on draft after the jump; don't be surprised if more booze is added between now and then.
"A force for global mischief and global good," the UK-based Adventurists strive to make the world a little less boring by hunting down thrills in extreme locales, all while raising money for charity. While it's their job to test out adventures (rickshaw runs through the Rajasthan Desert? Mongolian horse derbies?), it's your job to sign up for the vetted wildness and earn cash for organizations of both the Adventurists' and your own choosing. So far, they have seven international challenges to choose from, and team members are selected at random, meaning you could very well end up trekking through miles of jungle in Southeast Asia with complete strangers.
This Saturday, July 9, the Adventurists will gather in Philly at The Union League (140 S. Broad St.), along with Hendrick's, to host a gin-infused tea party from 4 to 9 p.m., with speaker Charles Brewer-Carias (pictured) taking the podium around 5. The grandson of an British diplomat who calls Venezuela home, Brewer-Carias is quite possibly the model for The Most Interesting Man in the World — he's an accomplished author, discovered the world's largest quartzite cave and has dozens of species of plants and animals named after him. Throughout the event, they'll be serving high-end teas (Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, Darjeeling) and a selection of Hendrick's cocktails. Bring your best etiquette; appropriate tea attire is required.
Tickets to the event can be purchased here, but Meal Ticket has a pair to give away. Entering is easy: Before tomorrow evening at 5 p.m., simply detail your most impressive food adventure in the comments. (If you're not yet registered to comment, please do so with an email address you check regularly — that's how we'll alert the winner.) Happy adventuring!
UPDATE [08jul11]: Cheers to Meal Ticket commenter Sarah Aileen, who wins two tix to tomorrow's event for her anecdote, which you can read after the jump.
There are few things more disappointing than buying wine and hating it. I suppose it serves me right for being taken in by nice packaging, but I was searching for a palatable boxed red wine — something to keep in the fridge for cooking, and for the occasional glass with dinner — and ended up with a 3-liter box of this stuff, which was nigh-on undrinkable. With guests coming over and the liquor cabinet mostly bare, we picked up some cheap brandy and triple sec at the PLCB store to try and salvage the plonk by making sangria.
Just in time for our annual Stage 5 heatwave, Downingtown's Victory Brewing has entered the frozen dessert fracas, offering three ice cream varieties inspired by Victory beers to the double-scoop-loving public. They've served these ice creams in their brewpub for close to a decade, but this is the first time they've been available in take-home pints and quarts. The flavors — Triple Monkey (banana ice cream with peanuts and caramel, made with the wort from Golden Monkey); Hopped Up Devil (cayenne/cinnamon ice cream with choco coffee beans, made with Hop Devil wort) and Storm King Crunch (malted milk ball-studded chocolate ice cream made with Storm King Stout wort) — are available for purchase at the brewery's retail shop, in addition to cases and six-packs of the non-alcoholic root beer owner Bill Covaleski has been making since '97.
Photo: Courtesy of Victory Brewing
If there's one thing I like better than drinking Dogfish Head's Festina Peche (a Meal Ticket favorite!), it’s cooking with Dogfish Head's Festina Peche. Because Sam Calagione & Co.'s new-school Berliner weisse finishes as dry as Piedmont pinot grigio, it's more versatile than you might think in savory applications, but its subtle peachiness makes it a natural in desserts.
Back in March we had a bit of info on the cloak-and-dagger Hop Sing Laundromat (1029 Race St.), the Chinatown cocktail joint run by a dude known only as Lêe. Stopped in this afternoon to find the space pretty close to completion — the wall on the eastern side of the room has been done over, sconced-up and chipped away to expose the original brick in stylishly haphazard sections, and that 40-foot wood-paneled bar is in like Flynn, with much of the equipment already placed. Learned today that a number of decorative touches in the Laundromat were salvaged from churches; have a look-see at the crossed-up hanging lights above the bar (!). Furniture's still being selected/discussed.
Lêe chalks up the delay in opening (he was originally aiming for April/May) to a litany of construction tweaks and delays; at this point in time, the bar owner will only commit to "late summer" as far as opening goes. For now see our March post for background. More photos after the jump.
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